//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: PINCH 
// Story: Awoke IN 
// by Qwix 
//------------------------------//

"I think I would have preferred the orange tie, honestly—"

"Nonsense. I've already had a dress lined up, this mint green one goes with my mane."

"But I like orange."

Lyra and Pennaprose were walking along a path to the edge of the Everfree Forest, where Lyra's house was. She scoffed. "Don't let Applejack hear you say that."

"But she's orange anyway!" said Pennaprose. "She's an orange apple! Wait, does she have a twin?"

Lyra looked confused as she bent down to find the buried handle to the door. "Why would that even matter?"

"Because then there would be a pair of orange apples!" said Pennaprose. "Kumquat!"

As the concealed door popped open, she froze and planted a hoof in her face. "...Really? Really?"

"What?" he said, entering the staircase with the black suit. "Wordplay."

"Smartass."

He looked up at the new voice; it was Gosthette, perched precariously on the door's top edge. "That wasn't wordplay, that was just bad. ...Anyway. Get in, quick. Better to speak somewhere we can't be easily overheard..."

He ducked as Gosthette rose into the air again and flew like a dart into the stairway down. He followed suit with his suit while Lyra tailed closely behind.

The stony corridor, lit with softly glowing multi-colored crystals, lapsed in silence save for two pairs of hoofbeats and the faint echo of something scrapping the ground ahead.

They emerged into the living room; the chairs and writing table had been moved aside. Gosthette was bending over the fireplace; in seconds, it lit, casting her shadow on him and Lyra.

"Pennaprose."

Gosthette sounded neither happy nor sad. She turned around; even if the fire hadn't cast her face in shadow, he could tell her intentions. "Gosthette," he replied tonelessly. There was an unspoken tension between them, tugging the air into thin threads.

She shook her head. "It has been a while, hasn't it?"

"Cut the small talk, Goss. You have news, and judging from your desire for secrecy..." stated Pennaprose. "It is something worrying."

She sneered. "You are correct. What I am about to say should not be repeated to anypony except for a choice few. I didn't want to involve you in it, but the events of last night have overturned my will."

"As mystic as ever, are you?" joked Lyra. "Just as I remember."

Gosthette grimaced, her teeth gleaming in the reflected light. "I will cut to the chase, then. Pennaprose... last night. You had a decidedly odd dream, didn't you?"

He felt the base of his mane stand on end; the familiar unpleasantly electric feeling of suspense that comes with being exposed. "...What does it matter if you did?"

She smiled and dropped onto the carpet, letting her wings unfold. "Well then... you can come out now."

A rope dropped beside her; from it, a cream-colored mare in a black trench coat dropped from the gothic ceiling. Lyra jumped. "B-Bon Bon? What are you doing here? ...And how the—?!"

"Once an agent, Lyra," said Bon Bon. "Don't you remember? I told you I was an ex-agent. The thing is that the skills never left me."

"B-but... in my house!?" protested Lyra. "What in the name of hell—"

Gosthette flapped her wings in irritation, sending embers from the fireplace into the air. "We are facing a potential attack from the shadows, you two. I would suggest keeping quiet."

Lyra cowed. Pennaprose put a hoof around her and pulled her in, glaring at Gosthette.

She sighed before continuing. "I recall that Luna once told you that she heads an organization called PINCH, correct?"

"Yes," said Pennaprose. "The Pony Intelligence Northern Chapter. Are you implying...?"

"Agent Drops and I are connected to PINCH," began Gosthette. "She is an ex-agent that has come out of retirement temporarily due to her personal connections... while I—"

"—broke into headquarters on a whim without knowing what PINCH was. Thus securing her position in PINCH," finished Bon Bon. "We have been assigned to a case that is deeply troubling Luna—"

"—as it is related to anomalies within the dream realm," ended Gosthette. "You are the third case, Pennaprose."

"Of what?" he asked. "Lyra might have caught me dream-walking last night, but—"

"It goes beyond that," interrupted Gosthette. "According to Luna, all dream activity is within her control at all times. She can enter, alter, or change the sleeping dreams of others at her leisure, even communicate to individuals in their sleep and connect two separate dreams. But two weeks ago, something happened. Princess Cadance was reported to be sleep-walking in her castle within the Crystal Empire, in addition to talking to some sort of apparition during the event. Luna says that the timing coincides with a disturbance in the dream realm."

She reached behind her back, pulling out a scroll. "This is a transcript of the dream as she describes it. Does any of it's contents seem familiar to you?"

He took the scroll, unfurling it with his magic. As he read down the page, the hairs on his back rose.

"...Almost exactly. Three mountains, fire and ice, it's all there. The only difference is the third blade."

He looked at the mantle where Changeré and Djiingoh were perched. "She describes the dragon claw blade and Djiingoh existing. Yet the third, Changeré... she makes no mention of it."

Bon Bon looked surprised. "Interesting. The transcribe of the second case—of a dream analyst in Las Pegasus—describes much of the same dream. The only difference was that the blade known as Djiingoh was not seen in that dream. We were predicting that in yours, the dragon claw would be missing."

"That aside," said Gosthette. "In the second and third cases Luna managed to stake out the offending dreams as they began. She describes it as the dreams being locked by some sort of unknown magic; a celestial offense, if some other being was interfering with her work."

"So you think there is some sort of outside force interfering with dreams?" asked Pennaprose. "But what good would it do for the source to give three unrelated ponies essentially the same dream?"

"That I cannot answer with certainty..." mused Gosthette. "But the key word here is hostile. Camera operations near the physical site of the dreamer suddenly loose all connection, going irredeemably fuzzy. The dream itself is confusing and seemingly aimless. But Luna says that such dreams are the hallmarks of a vision or prophecy.

"The only thing being is the question of what prophecy would show itself to more than one pony over the course of two weeks in bizarrely different locations. There is no indication of who may or may not be the next target, and no way to explain the event."

She got up again, starting to pace. "The gala at Twilight's castle will be an opportunity for all three afflicted to be in one place—"

"Sorry, come again?" interjected Pennaprose. "You never said who the other dreamer was."

"Oh, sorry," said Gosthette. "But you have already met him. His name is Bassino Azion."

For the third time, an electric shock ran up his spine, causing him to twitch involuntarily. An image of his face appeared in his mind, then vanished as easily as he knew he could do. "...The head of FEST?"

"Correct," answered Bon Bon. "Somewhat strangely, he is a noted insomniac that refuses to take medication for it. He semi-frequently takes ten minute naps over the course of a day, but since he developed it about a year ago, he hasn't slept for any more than an hour.

"Needless to say, his health should be non-existent. But somehow, he has turned his weakness into a strength; he has strong workaholic tendencies and his psych evaluation suggests an IQ of 160 paired with a perception of time bordering on frighteningly accurate. His workplace where he spends almost all of his time contains no clocks, yet he has not missed a single meeting, deadline, or social event by anymore than a half-second to the stated gathering time in the last eight months. And not a second sooner than it, either.

"He likes writing papers; his home is littered with enough medical and academic documents writ by his own hoof to fill up an entire library. He lets nopony read them, however. ...Or rather, nopony can read them. They're written in a language not found in our database."

His ears perked up at the last detail. "A writer, huh? Of a different bent, but still, anypony who writes that much couldn't be malicious. Not enough time to be evil. Do you have a sample, perhaps?"

Bon Bon pulled out a piece of paper from one of her pockets. "Here. Maybe you can make sense of it."

He took it. The font was jagged, the letters definitely English, but arranged in strange ways. "Uto karika, Ischa'har, maet un uto hvaer. il-Famavra vin..." he spoke aloud. Beneath it was a cryptic sequence of symbols.

"As I said, we can't translate it. Istallion, Prench, Sponish, Japonyse... nothing works," sighed Bon Bon. "The closest we got was with Saddle Arabian. And it still spat out nonsense."

He gave the sheet back to Bon Bon, who tucked it back into her pocket.

"One question," said Pennaprose. "Why tell both of us this...?"

Gosthette stopped pacing, looking surprised. "Well, isn't it obvious? This directly involves you, Pennaprose. At Twilight's miniature gala will be the only chance for all three off the afflicted to be in the same place. We have already contacted Cadance about it and she will be expecting you to strike up a conversation about it, preferably when there isn't any other ears around. She returns to the Crystal Empire tomorrow to begin paperwork related to the exporting of the raw materials for SUNFEST, so this will be your only opportunity for a long while, as royalty is notoriously hard to speak directly too."

"And Bassino?" he asked.

"I am lucky enough to be interning under him, something that PINCH fixed behind the scenes. Even if he is infamously hard to keep an eye on, being his intern gives me a cast-iron excuse to tail him. Luna thinks that his insomnia may have a factor into this situation. If I find anything, you will get a message in your glasses."

He blanked in confusion. "Sorry, explain that last part? What about my glasses?"

"Bon, if you please..." said Gosthette lazily.

Bon Bon tapped her collar in response. Without warning, Pennaprose's glasses vibrated somewhat violently and fell off. "What the?"

"Luna visited you while you were in the hospital and presented you with that pair as a gift, didn't she?" said Bon Bon. "At the time, PINCH determined that you were an individual worth tracking. The pair she gave you has a locater, zooming capability, extendable headset and transmitter, built-in translator, camera, thought-to-word processor, and a four gigabyte storage. The arms also contain biomedical sensors and the whole thing can be power by either magic or electricity."

As she was listing off each feature, he put the glasses back on. Suddenly, many lights danced in his vision, including what appeared to be a piece of paper made of light. What is this even? he thought. As he did, the words appeared on the paper.

"You have activated the second-to-last feature," explained Bon Bon. "With it, you can write documents with your thoughts. Manipulating every application on it is done with thought as well. Think record and blink twice to activate the recorder, take and two blinks for the camera, write for writing, zoom for zooming, and so on."

Hm... off, he thought, blinking twice.

The boxes and digital paper vanished. "Does it come with lasers, by chance?"

Gosthette rolled her eyes. "Nope. It's supposed to be an information collecting device, not a weapon. But now that you know... the message will pop up in the right side of your vision when or if I send you one."

He nodded. "Anything else?"

"That is the end of the briefing," said Gosthette. "Lyra, any questions?"

She looked a little sucker-punched. "N-no... aside from what I'm supposed to be doing with this information."

Bon Bon walked over and put a hoof on her shoulder. "Lyra, I have a bad feeling about all of this. You might get dragged into it just because of Pennaprose's involvement in it. So both Gosthette and I agreed you had the right to know."

She brushed Bon Bon's hoof off, wearing a mixed expression of confusion and pain. "Please don't tell me that this means we're going to get dragged into another war."

Gosthette walked over. "We never said war, Lyra. Put it out of your mind for now. There is a party of sorts that we're invited to, are we not?"

Pennaprose put his neck around her back, pulling Lyra into a tight hug. "It's all right, Ly. We've overcome worse."

She returned the hug. "I know... that's what scares me."